Buff Canteens Serve at Non-Fire Incidents
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Recent reports of buff club canteen activities are further reminders of varied nature of such operations. Now putting its second canteen vehicle in service after having worn the old one out in just six years, the Santa Clara Valley Fire Associates (50 miles south of San Francisco) has run up an enviable record of support to the emergency services of two counties. Like the first canteen which went on the street in 1973, the new one is a converted rescue rig no longer needed by one of the area fire departments.
Averaging 35 runs a year, serving fire fighters in 17 cities, towns, fire districts, military installations, on calls ranging from downtown hotel blazes to brush and wildland fires, the Fire Associates group covers an area 20 miles wide by 30 miles long, with a fast-growing population of well over a million. Many of their runs are long ones.
Like most buff group canteens, their fire support unit responds to calls other than fires. And not only fire fighters, but fire victims and other emergency workers are served too. A typical nonfire appearance was at the August 1977 major disaster drill in Los Altos, involving units from four cities. Elsewhere, canteen service is being provided at such incidents as these, many of them during 1978:
- Prolonged searches for a lake drowning victim, and for a sewer worker swept away in a tunnel system.
- Hazardous chemical spills, leaks, and train derailments.
- Statewide training exercises, seminars, and workshops.
- Securing loose structural parts following major building explosion.
- Floods and tornadoes.
- Fire prevention demonstrations and parades.
- Industrial fire brigade drills.
- Police stakeouts and civil disturbances.
- Major charitable fund-raising gatherings of the “walkathon” type.
Baltimore buffs have a long tradition of feeding the large police details for traffic and crowd control at professional football games.
Service at fires themselves is not confined to the big burners drawing large crowds. High-piled warehouse storage, especially of paper products, leads to long, stubborn blazes which may be easily confined, but take many hours or even days of overhauling. At two such fires in Milwaukee during recent months, the Fire Bell canteen was called back to the scene repeatedly to serve meals to fire, police, and construction workers (in one case flames could only be extinguished after the building was demolished by heavy equipment). One of the fires—which made no headlines, officially only a first alarm—lasted 34 hours.
Having hot food available during such operations, especially in bad weather, not only keeps the men at peak efficiency, but saves rotating people in and out just so crews can be fed.
In Newark, N.J., plus the nearby cities of East Orange and South Orange, similar aid has been provided at 928 fires since 1949 by buffs of the Bell & Siren Club. Their original mobile equipment consisted of one 5-gallon coffee urn. Today, they operate a 1 1/2-ton custombody emergency field unit fully stocked with both hot and cold refreshments. The club’s recent 30-year summary shows the staggering total of 187,015 cups of coffee dispensed through 1978, almost half of that since 1970. Runs average well over 100 annually. This takes a lot of organization, with eight teams set up on a weekly duty roster to cover responses plus a seven-member committee for vehicle maintenance and stocking all in a group limited to 50 active members. Dispatch is by radio alerter from the Newark Fire Department alarm office.
As in some other buff groups, there is strong support for civil defense/fire auxiliary programs. The Newark Auxiliary Fire Division contains 14 officers who are Bell & Siren members. At one time, four club past presidents were deputy fire coordinators for Essex County.
The Newark buffs have also provided first aid more than 1100 times during their 30 years of service. On one occasion, their feeding and first aid capabilities were combined when a multiple-alarm fire released large amounts of chlorine gas. A fire department doctor asked the buffs for help in obtaining large amounts of milk to counteract irritation from the fumes. Members cleaned out a nearby supermarket, then dispatched a crew out of town to a milk-processing plant for still more.
When a new service is needed, groups like this will find a way to provide it.